How to really measure the 'Francis effect'

By Daniel Burke, CNN

updated 12:31 PM EDT, Thu March 13, 2014

Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected the Roman Catholic Church's 266th Pope on March 13, 2013. The first pontiff from Latin America was also the first to take the name Francis. It was a sign of maverick moves to come.

Pope Francis at the reception desk of the Domus Internationalis Paulus VI residence, where he paid the bill for his stay during the conclave that would elect him leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics.

Pope Francis embraced a young boy with cerebral palsy in March 2013, a gesture that many took as a heartwarming token of his self-stated desire to "be close to the people."

Pope Francis washes the feet of juvenile offenders, including Muslim women, as part of Holy Thursday rituals in March 2013. The act commemorates Jesus' washing of the Apostles' feet during the Last Supper.

Crowds swarmed Pope Francis last July as he made his way through World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. According to the Vatican, 1 million people turned out to see the Pope.

During an impromptu press conference on the plane from Brazil to Rome, the Pope uttered five now-famous words about gay priests: "Who am I to judge?" Many saw the move as the opening of a more tolerant era in the church.

In August, Pope Francis and Italian teens took what is likely the first papal selfie, another indication of the Pope's down-to-earth charm.

Pope Francis has eschewed fancy cars, instead choosing to drive a white Renault 4L. And he told priests and bishops to do the same.

Pope Francis embraced Vinicio Riva, a man with a rare skin disease, in November. The images went viral, with even atheists expressing admiration for the gesture.

Pope Francis marked his 77th birthday on December 17 by hosting homeless men to a Mass and a meal at the Vatican. One of the men brought his dog.

Pope Francis jokes with members of the Rainbow Association, which uses clown therapy in hospitals, nursing homes and orphanages. Many Catholics saw this image as the joyful flip side of Francis' embrace of the disfigured man.

In December, Time magazine named Pope Francis its Person of the Year, lauding him as "the people's Pope."

In another papal first, Pope Francis made the cover of Rolling Stone in January. The magazine praised his "obvious humility" and "empathy."

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Pope Francis has enjoyed nearly unprecedented popularity since his election last year

An Argentine who knows Francis explains what he was like before he became Pope

Some Catholics in Boston have been slow to embrace the Pope

Young Catholics are taking the Pope's message to the streets

Boston (CNN) -- In some ways, the "Pope Francis effect" doesn't seem very effective at all.

Despite the immense popularity the aged Argentine has won since his election last year, not a jot of doctrine has changed, nor has the Catholic Church swelled with American converts.

But there's more than one way to measure a pontiff's influence on his far-flung flock.

Start asking around -- here in Boston and beyond, Catholics and atheists alike -- and it's easy to find people eager to share how one man, in just one year, has changed their lives.

There's the gay man who finally feels welcome in his church.

The woman who weeps when headlines deliver good news at last.

The former priest who no longer clenches his fist during Mass.

The Latinos who waited forever for a Pope who speaks their language.

"I'm telling you, brother, if you focus on the numbers, you're missing the story," says the Rev. John Unni, a Boston pastor with an accent as thick as clam chowda.

"There's an energy, a feeling, a spirit here. It's like a healing balm."

Nearly half the residents here have roots in the church. It's home to a top Catholic college, one of just two Jesuit seminaries in the United States and a cardinal who has the ear of the Pope himself.

But Boston is also a city scarred by a church sex abuse scandal that harmed hundreds of children, demoralized dozens of innocent priests and broke the bonds of trust between clergy and congregants.

To say that Pope Francis has smiled and salved those wounds is a stretch longer than the Boston Marathon, people here say. There are plenty of ex-Catholics who'll never give the church a second look. But there are many others who say they just might.

St. Cecilia Parish, in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood, on Ash Wednesday.

Webb Chappell for CNN

In other words, this the perfect city to take a measure of the "Francis effect" -- to visit churches, classrooms, coffee shops and bars and learn how this Pope is shaping the lives of rank-and-file Catholics.

"He's sent us an invitation," says Mark Mullaney, president of Voice of the Faithful, a Boston-based reform group born in the wake of the sex abuse scandal.

"And now many of us are deciding whether to come to the party."

A few surprises

Jesus called Peter, the first pope, the church's foundation stone, its rock. In case you've been living under one, here's what Francis has done since his election on March 13, 2013.

He blasted bishops who spend money like they're auditioning for "MTV Cribs" and chastised priests who forget they're servants, not princes.

He called unfettered capitalism a false idol and trickle-down economics a sham.

He made the cover of Time, the New Yorker, Rolling Stone and The Advocate, a gay and lesbian magazine that makes no secret of its problems with previous Popes.

He said it's immoral when the media reports every move of the market but ignores the death of a homeless person.

He told his church to be big-hearted and bruised, open and merciful; to forget its finery and make a mess in the streets; to be a field hospital for this sin-sick world.

For all this and more, people love him.

A whopping 85% of American Catholics view him favorably, according to a Pew Research Center poll released Thursday. More than 71% say he's a change for the better.

Those kinds of numbers haven't been seen since the prime of Pope John Paul II.

At the same time, the Pew study found no increase in the number of Americans who call themselves Catholic, attend Mass regularly, or perform charity, leading some to doubt the "Francis effect." Others argue that those may not be the best measures of a Pope's influence.

The 77-year-old Francis may be an unlikely maverick in Rome, but he's been following the same playbook for decades in Buenos Aires, says the Rev. Gustavo Morello, an expert on Argentina's Catholic history.

Morello is a tall man who looks a bit like St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, at least by the light of a Boston barroom.

He and the man he knows as Jorge Bergoglio go way back.

The future Pope gave Morello his entrance interview 30 years ago when he sought to join the Society of Jesus -- the Jesuits' official name.

"He's always been pastoral, close to the people," says Morello, now a sociologist at Boston College. "The simplicity in his daily life, that's real."

In his first days as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio gave his priests a vacation, a luxury many hadn't enjoyed for five years. He paid for their travel and subbed in at their parishes.

But conservatives didn't like Bergoglio much, Morello says.

The future Pope once knelt before Pentecostal pastors and asked for a blessing. He argued that the state should recognize same-sex civil unions. He had no use for high-church liturgy or fancy vestments.

The Rev. John Unni says he's been energized by Pope Francis' example.

Webb Chappell for CNN

Like many Latin American priests, he was a street-wise pastor with a populist touch who made up his own mind, Morello says.

In other words, he was Pope Francis on a smaller stage -- with one big difference.

"I wasn't aware of his commitment to reforming the church and the curia," says Morello.

"That's new, and surprising."

Clenched fists and tears of joy

Michelle Sterk Barrett says she's not the type to shed a lot of tears -- but she confesses to crying four times during Pope Francis' first year in office.

They were tears of joy.

"He's made me proud to be Catholic," she says, "instead of always having to apologize for staying in the church."

The first drops rolled while she watched a respectful discussion about Catholicism on "Meet the Press" last March, a few days after the Pope's election.

She wept again seeing crowds flock to Francis during World Youth Day in Brazil last June. And her eyes misted over when Time named the Pope its Person of the Year and Rolling Stone gave him the full rock-star treatment in a glowing cover story.

"For years, all of the media coverage of Catholicism has been so negative. We've been ridiculed as out of touch and judgmental," says Barrett. "Just to see my church respected in public again -- it's incredible."

The 42-year-old comes from a devout family and leads the community learning program at the College of the Holy Cross, a Catholic school in nearby Worcester.

Barrett belongs to St. Ignatius Parish, a Jesuit church tucked into a corner of the Boston College campus in Chestnut Hil.

On a bitterly cold day last month, pastor Rev. Robert VerEecke admitted that many in his parish have caught Francis fever.

Even long-lapsed Catholics are creeping back to the pews. VerEecke said he recently heard from a woman who left the church 40 years ago but wanted to learn more about Jesuit spirituality because of Francis.

Comb through the homilies delivered by St. Ignatius' priests and you'll find dozens of references to the new Pope. The adult initiation class is filled with converts inspired by Francis.

"For those of us who are preachers or teachers," he says, "Francis has made our lives much easier."

St. Ignatius leans liberal, but Barrett is no basher of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI or his predecessor, Pope John Paul II. She respects their erudite, if sometimes esoteric writings.

But Francis has a unique gift for reaching people on a gut level, Barrett says. He uses simple language and earthy metaphors, telling priests, for example, to be shepherds who "smell like their sheep."

Her mother, Maureen Sterk, keeps quotes like that on her family fridge in San Diego and reads the Pope's homilies online every day.

"He's putting the message in terms that people can understand," says Sterk.

What her daughter says she likes most about Francis, though, is the way he's changed the church's tone from Thou Shalt Not to Thou Shall.

"He's the best thing to happen in the Catholic Church in my lifetime. And part of that is because he's followed so closely on the worst thing to ever happen. He's given hope to a city that desperately needed it."

Catholics here say it's hard for outsiders to understand how bad things were in Boston, the epicenter of the sexual abuse scandal in the United States.

In just the first four months of 2002, the Boston Globe, which broke the story, ran nearly 300 articles divulging the painful details.

Priests had preyed on kids. Bishops shuffled pedophiles from parish to parish. Hush-hush settlements led to loud accusations.

The archbishop resigned in 2002; discouraged priests quit; friends and family questioned Catholics who remained loyal to the church.

Bob Bowers says he's hopeful about Pope Francis but wants to see big changes in the church.

Webb Chappell for CNN

"You'd walk out onto the altar and just feel the fury in people," says Bob Bowers, a former parish priest in Boston.

As the espresso machine hisses in a Cambridge coffee shop, Bowers, a friendly guy with ruddy cheeks and a gray buzz cut, says he was a Pope Francis kind of priest.

He worked in one of the poorest parishes in the Archdiocese of Boston, where hypodermic needles littered the church parking lot each morning.

Still, he loved it there, especially working with kids.

Boston College gave him an honorary degree in 2002, noting that he was known for holding "the best children's Mass ever." College classmates had voted him Most Likely to Be a Priest.

After the sex abuse scandal broke, the archdiocese ended most of its youth ministries, Bowers says, pulling its priests from any situation with even the least chance for trouble.

Despite his vow of obedience to the bishop, the priest began challenging the Boston hierarchy. After the sex abuse scandal, he no longer trusted his bosses in the Archdiocese. "They lied to our faces," he says.

He signed a letter asking Cardinal Bernard Law, Boston's former archbishop, to resign, which he eventually did.

Bowers later refused to read statements from the pulpit denouncing same-sex marriage, instead passing out fliers that said "Love your enemies."

The archdiocese closed his former parish, merging it with a more affluent church. Bowers, who fiercely fought the closure, moved on to the Paulist Center in downtown Boston.

The center, which is run by a Catholic order of priests, focuses on serving the poor and counseling Catholics disillusioned with the church: gays and lesbians, women who want greater leadership roles.

Bowers says he asked for another parish post, but the archdiocese tried to ship him out of town, assigning him to a faraway church on the New Hampshire border. He quit instead.

Terrence Donilon, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Boston, said Cardinal Sean O'Malley "appreciates the work of all his priests, including Bob Bowers."

"Revenge and punishment are not in the Cardinal's playbook," Donilon added. "That's not who he is or how he operates."

For the past eight years, Bowers has been on what he calls an "open-ended leave" from the priesthood. He misses it like hell.

For a time, Bowers slept in friends' extra rooms with his dog Ralph, a Labrador-Spaniel mix, for company. Bowers and Ralph now live in nearby Quincy, where they take cold walks on the beach in the morning.

Eventually, Bowers, 53, landed a job as state director of volunteer services for the Red Cross, where he watched the Pope's election last March.

He likes a lot of what he sees in Francis. The washing of Muslim inmate's feet, the "Who am I to judge" comment about gays, the embrace of the severely disfigured man.

"There's an excitement people feel that's pretty contagious," Bowers says. "But part of me doesn't want to take part because I'm afraid of getting hurt again by this church."

After trying out a few Protestant churches, he attends Mass again.

He's noticed that he no longer sits in the pews with fists clenched in anger. He thinks that's due to Francis' influence on the church, but he's not quite sure.

Bowers says he'll really believe in the Pope when the head of the Catholic Church listens to the stories of victims of sexual abuse, of women who want to be entrusted to lead the church, of gays and lesbians who want to be seen as people, not problems.

Bob Bowers, a former priest, still keeps rosary beads in his pocket.

Webb Chappell for CNN

Then Bowers wants to see that same spirit of openness trickle down to American parishes.

Until then, he's withholding judgment.

Welcome home

One of out every 10 Americans is a former Catholic, according to a 2009 Pew Research Center study. If they formed their own church, they'd be the country's second-largest denomination, after the Catholic Church itself.

Many Catholics hope that Pope Francis can at least slow the exodus, and there are small signs across the country that some may be returning to the fold.

Brian Stevens was raised Catholic in Huber Heights, Ohio, but his passion for the church wasn't fired until he met the priests and nuns at the University of Dayton.

A campus ministry mission to Haiti set him on the path to serving the poor through Catholic programs. He worked his way up the ranks, joining the U.S. Catholic bishops' top anti-poverty program in 2007.

At the same time, though, Stevens, who is gay, had begun feeling alienated in his own church.

As the bishops launched a fierce fight against same-sex marriage, their rhetoric towards gays and lesbians became more charged and polarizing, says Stevens.

He grants that the bishops have every right to express their political views -- but he couldn't help feeling increasingly unwelcome.

In 2010, Stevens quit the bishops conference, moved to south Florida and stopped going to Mass. It was an act of self-preservation, he says.

"Imagine that someone is constantly poking you in the eye. Suddenly, when it stops, it feels a whole lot better."

Still, Stevens stayed active in charity circles and has been watching Pope Francis closely. He says he's noticed a change of tone towards gays and lesbians.

"He speaks with a new generosity of spirit that's truly welcoming," Stevens says.

"There's no nuance, no couching it in broader terms. It's just: I'm here to bring people closer to God, not judge them. With Pope Benedict, God bless him, that just didn't come through."

One night recently, St. Rose of Lima Parish in Miami Shores, Florida, asked social justice activists to talk about how Pope Francis has affected their personal and professional lives. Their stories inspired Stevens to join the parish.

If there's a "Francis effect," he says, it's not just about welcoming gays and lesbians into the fold, although that is big part of it.

It's also the Pope's insistence on putting poor people first and asking deep questions about Catholics' mission in the world.

"This is a moment of grace for the church," Stevens says.

Making noise in the streets

Back in Boston, the Rev. John Unni is energized, though it's tough to think of him as anything less than fully charged.

The Rev. John Unni says he often quotes Pope Francis in his homilies.

Webb Chappell for CNN

He wears a blue flannel shirt and work boots instead of priestly black. He's 52 but looks 35 -- the kind of guy you might see on one those TV reality shows about home remodeling.

A clerical collar is nowhere in sight. His cellphone buzzes like a drunk bumblebee.

Several years ago, Unni's parish, St. Cecilia in Boston's Back Bay, merged with a predominantly gay church nearby as part of the archdiocese's plan to deal with a lack of funds and priests.

Unni made a point of welcoming gays and lesbians to St. Cecilia, even scheduling a special service during Gay Pride month.

Conservative Catholic bloggers went ballistic, accusing him of watering down church teachings.

"They crucified me!" Unni says.

It was a different time in the church, Unni says, when doctrinal conformity was the order of the day. People who stepped out of line could expect to get smacked down.

The Archdiocese of Boston forced him to cancel the LGBT service, but Unni preached about homosexuality anyway, telling the congregants he doesn't know anything about the "gay agenda," all he knows is Jesus' agenda -- a. k. a. the Gospel.

Unni's been known to take that love-your-neighbor vibe to extremes.

Stories abound about him arriving late to dinner dates with parishioners because he was buying homeless men meals. He cut short a recent interview to dash into an immigration center.

Francis was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1969 and led the society's Argentine branch from 1973 to 1979. He says he joined the Jesuits for three reasons: their missionary spirit, their community and their discipline.

Because of the Pope's popularity, inquiries to join the Society of Jesus have doubled in the last year, to five or six each week, says the Rev. Chuck Frederico, vocations director for the Jesuit provinces on the East Coast. "I can barely keep up."

Many of these men who want to join the Jesuits say they heard about the society through Francis. Some haven't even been to church in years, Frederico says.

That's not the case with the Jesuits-in-training at Boston College, who are deeply immersed in studying theology and philosophy.

Jesuit formation typical takes 10-12 years, requiring the men to combine spiritual exercises, book learning and hands-on mission work.

Four young men met in a classroom on a recent day to talk about Pope Francis. Three are deacons who will be ordained priests later this year and continue their Jesuit formation. The fourth, a Jesuit from Spain, was ordained last year.

As they sit behind a row of desks, they look like typical graduate students, save for the all-black outfits and clerical collars.

I sit in the middle and fire questions at them. It's like the Inquisition in reverse, with the secular scribe asking churchmen pesky questions about the Pope.

I ask them to sum up Pope Francis in one word. They answer: Joy. Mercy. Improv. His own man.

OK, maybe math isn't part of Jesuit training. But I accept the three-word answer from Sam Sawyer because he's a fellow wordsmith, a writer with the online Jesuit Post.

The 35-year-old is from Scranton, Pennsylvania, and, like the other Jesuits, he's got a story about seeing the "Francis effect" up close.

For Sawyer, it was watching a friend who's left the church and become an atheist grow increasingly fascinated by the Pope.

"It's not bringing him back to the church," Sawyer says, "But he does find it encouraging that the same kind of pastoral presence he's seen and respected at local levels is being given a more universal stage and more attention."

Mario Powell, a bespectacled 32-year-old from Los Angeles, had a similar story.

A few years ago, he led a spiritual retreat for the trustees of a big Boston school.

One man, an ex-Catholic, was still pained by the sexual abuse scandal and annoyed by the mandatory retreat.

When Powell saw the guy again this year, he got a big pat on the back. "I don't think he's there yet. He's not going to Mass," Powell says, "but he's coming around."

Ryan Duns, a 34-year-old from Cleveland saw the "Francis effect" while hanging out with older Irish musicians during his weekly gig at The Green Briar, a Boston bar.

They had just watched the Pope pick up a child with cerebral palsy on TV. "Even they were touched by this man's compassion and tenderness."

An accordion player, Duns can't help describing the difference between Francis and previous popes in musical terms.

"He's got his own sense of the beats of the church. He's more merengue than Mozart."

Francis' Latin flavor energizes the parish of St. Mary of the Angels in the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury, which has a large Dominican community, says the Rev. Javier Montes.

Montes, the Jesuit from Spain, says some women at St. Mary's have remarried after previous spouses abandoned them.

They'd like to receive Holy Communion, the church's highest sacrament, but they can't because of Catholic law. Pope Francis says church leaders will discuss the ban at a synod in October.

"They have heard that the Pope is insisting on welcoming and being merciful and that there is something going on in Rome," Montes says, "so they keep asking if they will be able to receive Communion."

A week ago, Montes led a parish retreat based on "The Joy of the Gospel," the apostolic exhortation Pope Francis published in November.

For the first time in their lives, the abuelas and their children and grandchildren were able to read a papal document written in their native tongue, with recognizably Latino turns of phrases.

Hispanic Catholics are picking up the Pope's books across the country, from Anchorage, Alaska, to Savannah, Georgia, says Marina Pastrana.

To say that previous papal documents didn't exactly light the youth on fire is not a slam on Benedict or John Paul II, she says.

Behind the altar at St. Cecilia Parish is a tableau of the Last Supper.

Webb Chappell for CNN

Those Popes just spoke a different language, wrote for a different crowd.

"For a lot of young people the church's public rhetoric wasn't making sense to them," says Pastrana, 27. "It wasn't relevant."

But they perked up and paid attention when Pope Francis told the million Catholics gathered in Brazil for World Youth Day to go home and "make some noise in the streets."

For the anniversary of the Pope's election, Catholic Extension collected videos from young Catholics to send to Francis.

In one of the videos, a young man from California takes the Pope's advice literally, walking with other Catholics through gang-infested streets of Salinas to give neighbors a sense of peace and safety.

"I don't know if he would have done that five years ago," says Pastrana, her eyes tearing up. "I don't know if he would have done that one year ago."

Like the woman who weeps for joy, the gay man who feels welcome, the parish priest imbued with new life, the ex-priest who unclenches his fist, it's a sign of the influence of just one man, in just one year.